Politics

Nugent: President Obama is 'subhuman mongrel'

Ted Nugent is the man of a thousand gaffes and one hit.

The ’70s rock star, best known for his 1977 song Cat Scratch Fever, has made a reputation for himself as a conservative celebrity in recent years. A hard-rocking, gun-loving, right-winger, Nugent marked a huge change from the stereotypical musicians who backed the GOP; those of the country stars in cowboy hats variety. But while Republican candidates have benefited from having a celebrity endorsercool enough to have been sampled on Check Your Head, Nugent, who campaigned Tuesday with the presumptive Republican nominee for Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, is prone to making off-message, off-color comments, perhaps the most grotesque of which was his recent statement that Barack Obama is a “subhuman mongrel.” Here are eight other controversial remarks from Nugent:

SUCK MY MACHINE GUN

In a 2007 concert while on his “Love Grenade 2007 Shrapnel Tour,” Nugentproclaimed that then-Senator Barack Obama should “suck my machine gun.” But Nugent didn’t think much of Obama’s competition in the primary either, calling Hillary Clinton “a worthless bitch.”

“NAGASAKI-ING” IRAQ

The rock star thought the Iraq War was badly handled by the Bush administration—not because of issues with weapons of mass destruction or the Coalition Provisional Authority, though. Instead, Nugent bemoaned in a 2006 interview, “Our failure has been not to Nagasaki them.” There was a silver lining to the Iraq War for Nugent, who went to the country on a USO mission in 2004: “I visited Saddam Hussein's master war room. It was a glorious moment. It looked like something out of Star Wars. I saw his gold toilet. I shit in his bidet.”

ISLAM & TOFU

In a 2010 op-ed in the Washington Times, Nugent wrote, “If Islam is the religion of peace, then I’m a malnourished, tofu-eating anti-hunter.” He went on to say, “Islam is no more a peaceful religion than Jim Jones was a Christian prophet.” But don’t mistake him for being prejudiced. He did take pains to point out, “not all Muslims are religious whacks who deserve a bullet.”

WISH I WAS IN DIXIE

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling that Obamacare was mostly constitutional, Nugent took his outrage to the pages of the Washington Times. In a July 5 op-ed, the rock singer and guitarist wrote, “I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.” Nugent mourned that as a result of Chief Justice Roberts’ “traitor vote,” our “Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead.”